OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 257 



the improvements in its structure and execution 

 which modern artists have effected, must assuredly 

 be ranked among the highest and most refined 

 productions of human art ; that in which man has 

 been able to approximate most closely to the 

 workmanship of nature, and which has conferred 

 upon him, if not another sense, at least an exalt- 

 ation of one already possessed by him that merits 

 almost to be regarded as a new one. Nor does it 

 appear yet to have reached its ultimate perfection, 

 to which indeed it is difficult to assign any bounds, 

 when we take into consideration the wonderfiil 

 progress which workmanship of every kind is 

 making, and the delicacy, far superior to that of 

 former times, with which materials may now be 

 wrought, as well as the ingenious inventions and 

 combinations which every year is bringing forth 

 for accomplishing the same ends by means hitherto 

 unattempted. * 



(285.) After a long torpor, the knowledge of the 

 properties of light began to make fresh progress 

 about the end of the last century, advancing with 

 an accelerated rapidity, which has continued un- 

 abated to the present time. The example was set 

 by our late admirable and lamented countryman, 



* We allude to the recently invented achromatic combinations 

 of Messrs. Barlow and Rogers, and the dense glasses of 

 which Mr. Faraday has recently explained the manufacture in 

 a memoir full of the most beautiful examples of delicate and 

 successful chemical manipulation, and which promise to give 

 rise to a new era in optical practice, by which the next gene- 

 ration at least may benefit. See Phil. Trans. 1830. 



